Todd Jackson

Todd Jackson is a partner in the firm. Mr. Jackson represents employees in class action cases involving overtime pay, pension benefits, and employment discrimination. He has successfully served as lead counsel or co-lead counsel in numerous class actions, including class cases against IBM, Computer Sciences Corporation, KBR, Perdue Chicken, Masco Contractors, Farmers Insurance, American Families Insurance, Kelly Moore Paint Company, Corrections Corporation of America, the Tribune Company and Wells Fargo Bank, collectively resulting in over $250 million in recovered wages and benefits.

Mr. Jackson serves as a mediator on the ADR Program for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He is also available to conduct private mediations.

Mr. Jackson is recognized as a national leader in class actions, ERISA law, and wage and hour practice and is a frequent speaker at legal conferences on those topics. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Jackson was a shareholder at Lewis, Feinberg, Lee & Jackson, P.C. He served as a law clerk to Judge Judith Keep of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California.

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Significant Cases

Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow attorneys Todd Jackson and Catha Worthman, along with MALDEF and other firms, recovered $8.5 million in wages for construction workers who alleged they were forced to work off the clock. Too often, workers in the construction industry are taken advantage of by employers who do not pay all wages due. When a group of mostly Spanish-speaking immigrant workers came forward alleging they were being routinely underpaid, like many others they did not have the financial means to fight for their unpaid wages individually.

Todd Jackson and Catha Worthman, along with co-counsel Sullivan Taketa LLP and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), filed suit on behalf of the underpaid workers against the California residential construction company Masco Contractor Services of California, Inc., as well as related entities Western Insulation, L.P. and Schmid Insulation Contractors, Inc.

The workers claimed multiple violations of California law: failure to pay for travel time from offices to construction sites, being forced to work through meal and rest breaks, payment in illegal piece rates that even included “negative bonuses” when quotas were not met, and unpaid overtime. They also asserted a record-keeping claim on the grounds that they had to sign time sheets even if they disputed the hours recorded. The employers denied all the charges, but agreed to a settlement after Lewis Feinberg and co-counsel filed a class certification motion with detailed declarations in Spanish and English by well over 50 workers.

Over 1,000 workers shared in the $8.5 million settlement, which was approved by the federal district court for the Central District of California in 2009.

Dan Feinberg, Todd Jackson and Nina Wasow recovered $32 million in pension benefits for employees of the Tribune Company. The case involved an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). ESOPs are retirement plans that invest primarily in employer stock and are supposed to motivate employees by giving them a stake in the companies where they work. Unfortunately, employers sometimes manipulate the complex legal rules for ESOPs so that the employees see little or no benefit from the ESOP. Employees at Tribune Company – which owned the Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, WGN, and the Chicago Cubs – were left holding worthless stock after a leveraged buyout using their ESOP pushed Tribune into bankruptcy in 2008. GreatBanc, the ESOP trustee, had bought $250 million of Tribune stock with the employees’ ESOP funds as part of the leveraged buyout.

Dan Feinberg, Todd Jackson, and Nina Wasow led a legal team that represented these employee shareholders in a class action suit against GreatBanc and other ESOP fiduciaries over three years of aggressive litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

The District Court granted summary judgment in 2010 against GreatBanc, finding that the ESOP’s purchase of unregistered Tribune stock was an illegal transaction under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) because there were other Tribune shares trading on the stock market. Even so, in 2011, the defendants tried to cap the damages they owed at $2.8 million or $15.3 million, arguing that the ESOP was similar to a gift from the employer to the employees. The class of employee shareholders responded that the ESOP’s entire payment for Tribune stock should be considered in the Court’s damages calculation, even though the ESOP used a loan to purchase the stock.

The District Court agreed with the employee shareholders’ argument. In January 2012, the Court approved a settlement which paid the ESOP $32 million in damages. The settlement payment was then allocated to the class members’ 401(k) plan accounts. There are several published decisions in the case: Neil v. Zell, 677 F.Supp. 2d 1010 (N.D. Ill. 2009); Neil v. Zell, 753 F.Supp. 2d 724 (N.D. Ill. 2010); and Neil v. Zell, 767 F.Supp. 2d 933 (N.D. Ill. 2011).

Todd Jackson, Dan Feinberg and Nina Wasow recovered $55 million in pension benefits for employees of Kelly Moore Paint who participated in the company ESOP. Using their expertise in ERISA law and their experience in securing full benefits for employees whose companies create ESOPs, these Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow attorneys reached a settlement of the case after hard-fought litigation.

ESOPs are intended to motivate employees by giving them a stake in the companies where they work. Like a 401(k) plan, an ESOP holds stock for the benefit of the employees. But ESOPs only hold stock of the employer company, and employees can’t move their stock to any other investment until after they leave the company or retire.

The Plaintiffs alleged, on behalf of a class, that the stock the ESOP bought for employees was overpriced because the valuation of the stock ignored major legal liabilities for Kelly-Moore products that had contained asbestos until the late 1970s.

After the employees bought the stock it suffered a steep decline in value, shocking employee stockholders who were led to believe their company stock was a safe investment by their ESOP trustee and that the ESOP had paid a fair price. Trustees are required by ERISA to act in the interests of the ESOP. Dan Feinberg, Todd Jackson, and Nina Wasow represented clients who alleged in 2006 that K-M Industries breached their fiduciary duties under ERISA by purchasing employer stock at an inflated price.

Complicating this case, the ESOP switched trustees between the stock purchase and when the lawsuit was filed. The new trustee had an indemnification agreement with the company, but the Court ruled that the indemnification agreement was impermissible because the company was partially owned by the ESOP, so any payment by the company would have reduced the value of the stock. Attorneys for the employee stockholders fought to keep the new trustee from getting let off the hook for its own errors – and letting the plan beneficiaries bear the cost. This key ruling helped clarify a murky area of ERISA law.

Plaintiffs settled with K-M Industries, the family trust of its founder William Moore, and the successor trustee of the ESOP, North Star Trust Company, for a total of $55 million. In addition to the sizeable settlement, the litigation resulted in two published decisions: Fernandez v. K-M Industries Holding Co., 585 F.Supp.2d 1177 (N.D. Cal. 2008), and Fernandez v. K-M Industries Holding Co., 646 F. Supp. 2d 1150 (N.D. Cal. 2009).

Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow attorney Todd Jackson, then at Lewis, Feinberg, Lee & Jackson, was part of a team of attorneys that recovered $65 million in overtime wages for IBM technology workers who the class alleged were improperly classified as exempt from state and federal overtime laws.

In January 2006, tens of thousands of current and former technical support employees of IBM alleged that the company had a common practice of failing to pay overtime compensation, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, California’s Unfair Competition Law, and the wage and hour laws of 14 other states. The class members provided IT support to IBM and to its customers, and the suit alleged that IBM improperly classified them as “exempt” from receiving overtime compensation when in fact they were not exempt.

Todd Jackson, along with co-counsel from firms around the country, represented the plaintiffs, emphasizing the distinction that the law makes between people who regularly make discretionary judgments as part of their jobs, such as senior professionals or managers, and those who apply their skills but do not exercise high level control and discretion over how projects are architected and coded. The IT support workers represented by Jackson and the plaintiffs’ other attorneys were certainly skilled, but they did not make judgment calls the way executives and managers do. According to the lawsuit, that made them eligible for overtime, and IBM’s failure to pay it was illegal. In July 2007, the Court granted final approval of a $65 million settlement with IBM. It remains the largest overtime pay dispute settlement ever in the information technology industry. Several more IT workers have filed overtime pay class action lawsuits against similar practices since, and industry treatment of these employees is beginning to change.

Awards

Mr. Jackson has been named a “Northern California Super Lawyer” every year since 2009.

Civic Activities & Professional Associations

American Bar Association, Plaintiffs’ Co-Chair of the Employee Benefits Committee of the ABA’s Labor and Employment Section

Education

Bar Admissions

State Bar of California

Northern District of California

Eastern District of California

Central District of California

Southern District of California

U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

The information provided by Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow LLP on this website is for general information only. Nothing on this or associated pages, documents, comments, answers, emails, or other communications should be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation. The information on this website is not intended to create an attorney-client relationship, and receipt or viewing of this information does not create an attorney-client relationship.